Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Studying

I'm in my tropical medicine elective, which is rad, but I'm studying for my midterm in systemic pathology. I keep forgetting these diseases, so I'm just going to write them down. Thought you'd be interested. Ha.

Wegener's granulomatosis - vasculitis affecting lungs, kidneys & others; ANCA positive -> causes neutrophil degranulation; small-medium size vessels; can lead to lots of H&E symptoms, glomerulonephritis, skin nodules, lung "coin" lesions, cavitations & hemoptysis. Thanks Wiki.

Primary Biliary Cirrhosis (PBC) - progressive destruction of interlobular bile ducts w/florid duct lesions; most common in middle-aged women; eventual cirrhosis

Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC) - fibroinflammatory destruction of bile ducts w/"onion skin" lesions; most common in young men; eventual cirrhosis

Wilson's Disease - accumulation of copper in organs, esp. liver, brain & eye; autosomal recessive disorder of copper metabolism; Kayser-Fleisher rings; presents w/acute hepatitis & nonspecific findings (i.e. mallory bodies - purple blobs)

Time just ran out... gotta go take a test. Why are there so many weird liver things?? And all this on the coat tails of a post about using this blog for more noble purposes. I repeat: sheesh.

2 comments:

Mackenzie said...

:-) Wilson's disease- my favorite answer if I can't come up with anything else for a differential. The liver seems to do EVERYTHING...isn't it amazing?! But the fact that it processes toxins makes me pretty sqeamish about eating it. Hope your test went well!

Becki said...

Oh, but please do more of these posts even if they're not considered noble. Thanks for the info of labyrthritis too.